[Area] Charcherry town/forest, Starter Planet

"I've been through too much on my end to be mad... Honestly I was worried you left me because of my crazy high risk plan to stop Chronos. ➜"
She leans in close and whispers
"It worked though, thank you. ➜"
Niki kisses Ben on the cheek.

Niki notices the SUDDEN NEARBY CHARLES that seemed to be interrupting the moment.
"...When did you get here???? ➜"

Niki rolls her eyes at Charles, then returns her attention to Ben.
"I think we both have a lot to talk about. Let's sit down somewhere. ➜"

"i didn't bring charles along. but yeah, place to sit, sure."
The crow turned to Charles and spoke up nervously. "Is that a, uh, security risk, or...?"
"nah, just charles."

"more of an audience for yours." He gestured to the assembled crew.

She takes a second to prepare, and is soon deep in a long tangent of some sort.

(optional bgm: Luigi's Tiring Story)
"Alright then. I'll tell my story. It's a long one though, so try not to fall asleep. ➜

So, about a month ago, there was a breach and Seth's body mysteriously disappeared. I'm sure you remember this, as well as the note that got dropped off afterwards, which pretty much confirmed it was the work of Chronos, the dude our group had to fight in our session after he pulled all that cruel crud with the sprites and stuff. Anyways, his ghost possessed Seth's body, though I have a hunch it had sorta been with him ever since he grew horns in the first place, and only just then had been awakened out of dormancy. So he skipped town into the past and let the note.
Something you might not have known though, is that I had already been tracking him before the incident had even begun. Not much else to do around here when everyone else seems to be so distant and preoccupied. I knew I couldn't fight him, because that would obviously just damage Seth's body which he was using, but I had to do something. Our Rogue of Heart had been scared off to parts unknown, or possibly overwritten, so that option was out. ➜
Eventually, I had an idea. If I could guide Seth in his dreams to find Chronos and defeat him somehow, Seth would be able to take control again. Only problem was, skaianet viewports don't work that well in the void, so I had to get access to an alternative. With some clever thinking, I figured 'hey, voidco is a thing, and they have surveillance stuff that works out there' so I contacted the meteor crew to go on a mission to get their viewport software.
Eventually they pulled through and sent it over. I was kinda shocked to see what kind of control I could have with the program. I could control any player as if they were the main character in a video game. That gave me an idea. If I could recreate the places and situations Seth would visit during his quest using rpg maker, I could map the resulting control data to the voidco software. Obviously it wouldn't be done directly, I wanted the rpg to have replay value outside of the task it was required for. So I made some macro codes that would activate a certain pattern of suggestions and commands when sent to the right thing. When the player would get to an ending, they would receive a corresponding ending code to send to my email address. From what I've been able to tell from checking my stuff back home, somehow the Cat ending got chosen. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. ➜"

"I gave myself about 2 extra months to work on the game and the connecting code. With siren's help, I was able to pull it off and release the game and set up the email sorter thing before the deadline. Did I mention the deadline is when I knew I'd have to die to make it work? Well, that was a thing.
I was, really nervous about it, but I knew I had a way to come back, in the form of that rose you gave me a while back. So I incorporated that into the plan as well. I knew if I carried the rose with me on my person it might either activate too fast to give the ~ATH codes time to execute, or Chronos would find it and do something bad with it, so I hid it in a place he nor his vessel would want to go through. I basically constructed a small dungeon of annoyance and way too much cold. I tried to make sure it would also be easy enough for there to be no casualties, because then the party would try to use the rose on whoever fell there and that would ruin the point of the whole thing. ➜

The rose itself was placed in perfect indoor gardening conditions to keep it healthy, with the lights and sprinklers running on timers for as long as they needed to. The sprinklers got their water from the lake above the cave, so there would be no need to worry about running out of water. The lights, as well as the stereo system and the temperature control were powered by a skaianet power hub hidden in a secret chamber. I wrote instructions on where to find it and had it queued up on tumblr and my printer at home for anyone to find it after the codes were processed. ➜"

Niki takes a moment to slow her tangent a little bit.

"...wow, all this back information and I haven't even gotten to the weird stuff. Well, anyways, one day, really close to the deadline, an hourglass showed up at my doorstep, sand still slowly emptying into the bottom chamber. That was my cue that the end would be near. So then, I took a trip to Seth's private tropical island to meet my fate. I showed up at just the right time and was able to write a quick note to send into the future, telling whoever to grab my body from the past so there wouldn't be so much gross decay to deal with. After sending that off... he showed up. ➜"

She takes a deep breath, noticeably a bit more stressed than usual. Had she been avoiding this part of the story with the long unnecessary tangents everywhere?

"His eyes... glared bright red... I could recognize that look immediately. I, I think I had a flashback to another timeline where he had that same exact look. Panicking, I tried to escape. Obviously I couldn't. Not only was I destined to meet my end, but he also disabled any others from using time powers to do anything against him. I was trapped in a situation I couldn't possibly escape, and it was al my fault.
He struck without mercy nor hesitation... and soon, I was dead.

That isn't where the story ends though, obviously. ➜"

Another deep breath. The last sentence's matter-of-factness being used to cushion the stress of having to recall her last moments again.